Black
Candles (Los ritos sexuales del diablo)
1982
Director- José Ramón Larraz
Cast- Helga Liné, Vanessa Hidalgo, Jeffery Healey, Alfred
Luchetti, Manuel Gómez-Álvarez, Carmen Carrión, Paola Matos
From Spain
The
movie has a striking poster with the demonic man carrying a naked woman with
more beauties in the background and an angry goat off to the side. Well, there
is nothing in this movie that is as scary as that poster, but it definitely
doesn’t over sell the sex!
The
movie begins with a schmuck cheating on his wife, Fiona, played by German born
Spanish Scream Queen, Helga Liné. Seriously, who would cheat on her!?! Well he
gets what’s coming when he is murdered with a bit of witchcraft.
Later,
the schmuck’s sister Carol (Vanessa Hildago) shows up to both pay respects and
wrap up family business. Tagging along is her husband who seems consistently
pleased with himself.
Carol’s spidey sense begins
to tingle when she notices several pieces of satanic artwork on display in
Fiona’s living room. Fiona plays it off
and when asked about her husband’s death, she blames it on his drinking. Carol
decides to get nosey and finds herself on the wrong side of a witch cult that
doesn’t take kindly to strangers.
The plot
of the film is not really that original, incorporating tropes from both the
satanic and folk horror genres. However, it packages those tropes quite well and
delivers on the eroticism with occult elements that feel authentic and
occasionally shocking. Two such scenes include the lithe Paola Matos ,who turns
in an unforgettable performance first with a lesbian sex scene and then a scene
where she has sex with a black goat as part of a magical ritual! Another scene
that stands out is where a man is punished for betraying the coven. He is held
down and raped with a sword (don’t betray witches!).
The real
significance of the movie, at least to me, is that it served as the swan song
for Helga Liné’s horror career (though she would continue to act for another 25
years in non-horror roles).
Helga’s horror career
spanned parts of three decades and involved significant contributions in
different horror subgenres alongside some of the biggest names of her era. She
had a supporting role behind the queen
of Gothic horror, Barbara Steele, in Nightmare Castle (1965). She starred in several Italian giallo film’s most notably So Sweet…So
Perverse (1969) which also starred fellow Scream Queen Erika Blanc. She
shared the screen with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas in Horror Express (1972).
Her most
important contributions came, though, as part of the Spanish horror
exploitation movement in the early 70s. Its important to bear in mind that
Helga was in her 40s by this point and stealing the show from women half her
age! She worked twice with the king of Spanish horror, Paul Naschy in the Mummy’s Revenge and had the costarring
lead with Naschy in the excellent Horror Rises from the Tomb. She had the starring role in The Loreley’s Grasp directed by the man who gave us Tomb of the Blind Dead, Amando de
Ossorio. She also starred in The Vampire’s
Night Orgy, directed by León Klimovsky who had worked with Naschy on many
occasions.
Mixed in
with these horror staples she also starred in the strange Italian action/
suspense film Kriminal and she even
shared the screen with Mexican cult figure Santo in Santo vs. Dr. Death!
All of that brings us to Black Candles. Helga often took on sexy roles and never shied away from showing skin. Helga was 50 when she did Black Candles but her smoldering beauty had not cooled a degree. If anything, her age made her much more believable as the dominant force in the cult.
But Helga always carried herself with the grace and control of royalty
(case in point, see her as the witch returned from the dead in Horror Rises from the Tomb). Black Candles is a very erotic role, and
as I said before, shocking in places. It makes the perfect exclamation point to
a horror career that included the biggest names in Gothic, Spanish, British and
Italian horror.
Fun fact- Director José Ramón Larraz was no stranger to
eroticism. He is best known for the bloody, sexy film Vampyres, one of the best films in the lesbian vampire sub-genre.
